magnificent trees that had been one of the features of the Place had not been spared. Some were lying prone upon the ground and others had been cut into cord-wood, while those that had been left standing had been trimmed and topped and shorn of their beauty.
Even the topography of the Place had changed. The bed of the old highway leading to the gate that opened on the main avenue had now become a gully, and a new highway had been seized upon—a highway so little used that it held out small promise to the stranger who desired to reach the house. The surroundings were so strange that I was undecided whether to follow the new road, and my horse, responsive to the indecision of my hand, stopped still. At this an old negro man, whom I had noticed sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree not far from the house, rose and came forward as fast as his age would permit him. I knew him at once as Uncle Primus, who had been the head servant in the Place in Linton Moreland's day—carriage-driver, horse-trainer, foreman, and general factotum. I spoke to him as he came forward, hat in hand and smiling.
